The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2014, and October 31, 2015, are automatically nominated for the 2015 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on October 23, 2015, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

KIRKUS REVIEW

Brilliantly styled tenth entry in the Alan Lewrie British naval series, set in the Napoleonic era (King’s Captain, 2000) and written by an American. This outing matches the darkness of Lambkin’s second installment in the series, The French Admiral (2000), which had Lewrie looking at the American Revolution through British spyglasses, fighting hopelessly on land alongside colonial loyalists at Yorktown, and facing atrocities everywhere. Series fans well remember Lewrie’s dissolute father, rakehell Major-General Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, who screwed Lewrie out of his maternal inheritance and signed him over for life service in the Royal Navy at age 15, to rid himself of the lad and enjoy his late wife’s money—though Lewrie later regained it. So it’s shocking to see him out carousing on a day-and-night -long drinking ramble through London’s stews and gaming halls with the shamelessly lecherous and acidly jolly father. Now commanding the frigate Proteus, Lewrie finds himself under canvas for the Caribbean and Haiti and the blood-bedewed Black rebellion led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, there to match wits with other privateers off St. Domingue. His crew, racked by Yellow Jack and dying in droves, must be replaced by Black hands, slaves who’ve never worn shoes or sailing dress, or worked beside or eaten with whites.

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